


if you ain't prayin' (then why are you on your knees?)

by doctorkaitlyn



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Canon Compliant, Complicated Relationships, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Panic Attacks, Post-Episode: s01e03 The Possibilities, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 06:38:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7704316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he comes back down for good, when he actually starts to feel grounded and <i>present</i> in his own body again, Donnie takes a moment to reflect on how fucking ass-backwards the night has gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you ain't prayin' (then why are you on your knees?)

**Author's Note:**

> **warnings** for panic attacks, throwing up, the sort-of blasphemy that comes with this show, suicide mentions, implied sexual content and implied non-con that doesn't actually happen. a more detailed description of that is in the end notes.

Donnie barely gets a mile down the road before bile bubbles up in his throat. 

He yanks the car over, off the pavement, and barely manages to shove the door open before the bile spills up and out of his mouth. Only the seat belt still strapped across his chest keeps him from tumbling out onto the dirt shoulder of the road as he empties his stomach. When it finally ends, his throat is burning and his nose is tickling from inhaling dust spewed up by his tires. He sucks in deep breathes, trying to keep them steady, but it's only a matter of time before he's hyperventilating, wheezing like an old engine. 

Even after throwing up, he can still taste the gun, oily and metallic on his tongue. He can still _feel_ it, stabbing into the top of his mouth, one flick of his finger all that was keeping it from sending a bullet roaring through his brain. 

He manages to shove himself back into the car with his good arm and yank the door closed, but that doesn't make the hyperventilating stop. His chest is stretched tight as a drum and he wonders if he's having a heart attack, if somehow, maybe just by looking at him, Jesse silently told his heart to explode. 

He drops his head against the steering wheel, cold sweat slicking his back, and tries to get himself under control. There's another lump in his throat trying to come up, but he refuses to let it. He's already done enough throwing up for one day. 

He waits and waits and eventually, after what might only be a few minutes or might be an hour, things start to return to normal. His chest loosens up a little bit at a time and the fear sweat drenching him starts to dry, although he can still smell it, stinking up the car like one of the drunks that litter the streets in town. When he comes back down for good, when he actually starts to feel grounded and _present_ in his own body again, he can't help but take a moment to just reflect on how fucking ass-backwards the night has gone. 

Seeing the preacher down on his knees, staring up at him through his tar-black eyelashes, had been one of the greatest moments of Donnie's life. Mainly, it'd made him feel _triumphant_ , redeemed, like he'd be able to show his face in town again without feeling like everyone was laughing at him behind his back. 

But there'd been something else below that, something located below his navel, something that made him want to reach down and press the heel of his palm against the front of his pants. If it hadn't been for the gun in one hand and the cast keeping the other pressed against his chest, he would have done just that. 

He'd imagined the preacher being down on his knees before, for reasons related to that second feeling. Especially during church, which was definitely some kind of a sin, but seeing as there were people in Annville doing all sorts of shit that was far fucking stranger than that, Donnie figured God had more important things to deal with to pay him any mind. They'd gone every Sunday since Jesse had appeared back in town with too-long hair and a piece of shit truck, and Lord knew it wasn't for the quality of his sermons. Half the time, you could barely even understand what he was saying; he mumbled, rambled, stared out the windows as he talked, sounded like he was either half-drunk or half-asleep. 

But even if he was a piss-poor preacher, there was no denying that he had a mouth on him; lips that looked like they were made to be bitten, that spent more time wrapped around a cigarette or a whiskey bottle than they did the word of the Lord. 

It was all too easy to imagine them wrapped around something else. 

But before he'd _really_ been able to enjoy Jesse kneeling at his feet, the preacher had spoken and the weary, bored voice he used at the pulpit was gone, obliterated, hidden by something else entirely. Something deep that sounded like an echo and a thunderclap all at once, something _impossible_ that had made Donnie back up into the filthy, graffiti riddled stall. 

And in the moments that had passed before the voice issued another command, as Jesse stalked across the room with his eyes nearly as black as his hair and his jeans, another image had popped into Donnie's mind, fully formed like a recent memory, like he was getting a real glimpse into the events that were going to unreel over the next few seconds. 

Jesse telling him to get down onto his knees, reversing their positions. Telling him to drop the gun on the floor. Closing the stall door behind them with one hand, reaching for the button on his jeans with the other. Telling (no, _commanding_ ) Donnie to open his mouth for something that'd be less metallic than the gun but maybe just as heavy against his tongue. 

And if the preacher had asked him that a few weeks ago, pulled him aside after church or grabbed him in the parking lot after work, Donnie would have said yes without a second thought. Nothing about God or Betsy. Just _yes._ Even after Jesse stuck his fucking nose into Donnie's marriage, he thinks he would have said yes, if the opportunity had come up. 

Deep down inside, part of him knows that even after the preacher humiliated him by making him squeal like an animal being slaughtered, even if he _did_ make him dirty his knees on the bathroom floor and open his mouth, not all of that would have been the voice's doing. Part of it would have been all Donnie.

But not any longer. Not after Jesse made him taste the gun, made him stick it right up against the roof of his mouth and pull the hammer back, made him listen to that ominous _click_ and wonder what it would feel like to die in a bathroom stall at an anonymous gas station.

The next time he gets Jesse Custer on his knees (and there _will_ be a next time, he's damn certain of that, even though the thought makes his chest yank tight again), he's not letting him get back up again. 

Not if he can help it.

**Author's Note:**

> explanation of the implied non-con that doesn't actually happen: basically, Donnie has a quick moment where he thinks that Jesse is going to make him kneel on the floor to put something that isn't a gun in his mouth. but this doesn't happen.
> 
> as always, I can be found on [tumblr.](http://banshee-cheekbones.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
